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The One-Time Pad

In this step, you will learn about the strongest encryption scheme, the one-time pad (or OTP), as implemented by the Vernam cipher. You will also find out how its ‘perfect …

Vigenère cipher

You might remember the Vigenère cipher from the earlier step about the history of encryption. It is a polyalphabetic cipher that uses multiple shifts to encrypt a message. In this …

The history of encryption

The need to obscure messages has been around almost as long as the process of writing. In this step, I am going to shine a light on the history of …

The role of encryption in network security

A key application of encryption is network security. Networks that handle data are reliant on encryption to protect sensitive information from those who are not authorised to access it. When …

What is encryption?

Let’s start with a simple definition. What is encryption? Encryption is a process that transforms data to obscure its meaning — in other words, it turns it into something that …

The encryption process

In this step you will learn about several of the main concepts in the encryption process, as well as some important terms. As you have already seen, an encryption scheme …